1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an injection molding system and more particularly to an injection molding system that includes a mechanism for sorting molded articles from a plurality of injection molding machines.
2. Description of the Related Art
In an injection molding factory, when work such as box packing or alignment of molded articles molded by injection molding machines is performed, such work is usually performed in each injection molding machines using a robot or the like. However, when a robot or the like is provided for each injection molding machine, equipment or maintenance costs may be high or large installation space may be required.
To reduce costs or installation space, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 4-330976 discloses a technique by which, in an injection molding machine physical distribution system in which a plurality of injection molding machines are arranged, articles taken out of the plurality of injection molding machines are carried by a single conveyor, and the articles taken out of the respective injection molding machines are determined by a shape recognition device, a weight-based determination device, and a temperature measurement device.
In the technique disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 4-330976 above, the shape recognition device is used to make a determination by differences in shape, but reference shape data is not sent to the shape recognition device. Therefore, the shape recognition device needs to make a determination among candidate images of all types of molded articles that may be carried, and a large load may be imposed on processing in the shape recognition device. To reduce an amount of processing in the shape recognition device, it could be considered that the shape recognition device recognizes the shape of an actual molded article and creates reference shape data each time a molded article type is changed. However, there would be another problem in that the creation of shape data must be conducted frequently and is troublesome, especially in high-mix, low-volume production.